Hello, I'm working on a Web programming project, I'm the solo developer of the project using Visual Studio 2008, and my coworkers are designers who use Web Expression (the new Microsoft HTML designer: a Frontpage descendant). We are all using DARCS and TortoiseDarcs for version control. As we work, there are some emerging issues that may be of general interest. Today, I want to comment some issues having to do with Web Expression automatic assistance and "metabase".
Web Expression assists the designer maintaining automatically the links on the Web (such assistance and the metabase are optional). For example, when a file changes its name, Web Expression automatically changes the file path in all HTML links referencing the renamed file (anchors, etc.). To do so, Web Expression maintains a metabase in special directories called "_vti_cnf" and_"vti_pvt". It makes no sense to put under version control "metabase" directories and their files. To prevent these directories and its contents to be listed by DARCS as files to add, we include the following two lines in our repositories boring files: _vti_cnf* _vti_pvt* In connection with Web Expression assistance, there is another issue I want to comment. It is appropriate to use Web Expression to rename files in order to use the automatic assistance. But it is also appropriate to use "darcs mv" to continue the history of changes of the file. Our current solution is to change the name twice: first rename the file in Web Expression explorer in order to update automatically all links to the file. Then (don't record changes yet) come back to the original name, and use "darcs mv" to change the name forever. In connection with the previous case, there is a more subtle issue. When Expression Web updates all links to the renamed file, we would like DARCS interprets these changes as a single "replace", but DARCS interprets them as many different hunks. In this case, we cannot use the previous procedure: replace in Web Expression, use DARCS revert and then use DARCS replace. The automatic Web Expression "replace" depends on token context (it just changes the file path when it appears in html links: href, etc..), while DARCS replaces all token occurrences despite of context. Our current solution is to let DARCS interpret Web Expression automatic path replace as many different hunks. Similar issues arise with Visual Studio automatic assistance to change the name of files and programming entities like classes, methods and fields: Visual Studio name changes assistance takes into account the scope of the programming entity (that’s great, but It doesn't change other entity name references: comments, etc.). Thanks for your attention and I hope that my comments are useful for someone Santiago Estrada _______________________________________________ darcs-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.osuosl.org/mailman/listinfo/darcs-users
